To pray or not to pray

We were talking about prayer last night. I don't know if this surprises anyone, but there are a LOT of Christians who struggle in their attempts to pray on a regular basis.

The big question of the night was, "Why?"

I think if I really, honestly believed that God was going to answer my prayers, I would eagerly hop out of bed each morning to lay my petitions before him. So, deep down, do I not believe prayer is effective? Have I been a Christian for this long, yet I don't even believe in one of the most basic principles?

I guess I should start out by telling you I love my prayer time. I'm sure I don't pray as much as I should (but can you ever say, "Oh, I pray enough"??) And I definitely don't leap out of bed early in the morning, wide-eyed and energized. But I love the time I spend with God. I love the closeness, the intimacy. It's the most sane part of my day.

But what we were talking about last night is the petition side of prayer. Crying out for ourselves and others because of pain, hardship, suffering. The truth is, God doesn't always do what we think He should want to do. And so sometimes it gets hard to continue to pray for things we've been praying and praying and praying for, without seeing any results. Ever felt that way?

The first step was just admitting it. We have no idea why God wouldn't want to heal people from their suffering. We have no idea why He lets some things go on for so long. We think we know His heart, then we wonder if we know Him at all. And we think, "Why pray? He'll do what He's going to do either way."

And that would seem true if it weren't for example after shining example of God coming through in more magnificent ways than we could ever imagine when we prayed. We've seen both.

So what can we say? There was a group of eight of us discussing the topic, and this is what we know we can believe:

1. God is a good God.
2. He loves the people we pray for MORE than we do.
3. His ways are not our ways, His timing is not our timing.
4. We put WAAYYYYYY too much importance on the circumstances of this world. We need to realize the things that are eternal are of much greater importance, and recognize that God could be doing extraordinary things in that realm while circumstances remain unchanged.
5. HE KNOWS WHAT HE'S DOING.

So overall the consensus was: We can trust Him. We are operating with very little information while He operates with ALL the information. He is a kind and loving God who never wastes anything... not even pain... and we can trust Him. He will never leave us high and dry. He will always be near.

So we will continue to pray. And instead of checking to see if He's done what we've asked Him to do, we will rest in the assurance that we are all in very good hands.